She'd placed a facemask on him but had only turned the flow to two liters per minute. The effect of this was to give him LESS oxygen than was available in the atmosphere, since the mask was a closed system. Business as usual in the con home. My partner, without being asked, switched the supply tubing to our portable tank and cranked it up to fifteen liters per minute. This helped Mr. Li a little, but not much.

"He needs to be intubated." I said to no one in particular, referring to the placement of a breathing tube.

"No, no, no!" The nurse yelled, startling me. "He's a DNR! You can't put a tube in!"

Mr. Li gave her a contemptuous glance and I grabbed her arm and pulled her out into the hall. DNR stood for 'Do not resuscitate', a physician order, commonly given to people like Mr. Li, ordering paramedics and hospital personnel NOT to use advanced life support measures to save their life. After all, what would be the point of bringing Mr. Li back from the dead only so he could continue to die of cancer? But she could have found a more tactful way of informing me of this fact.

"Do you have a copy of the DNR?" I asked her pointedly.

She dug through the file she had for a moment and then produced the form. I looked at it, making sure it was legal. Patient's name, the words DNR or NO CODE, and the Doctor's signature were all present. "Okay." I said, handing it back. "You might consider working on your tact a little in the future." I advised the nurse. "Mr. Li can hear everything you say."

She scoffed at this, giving me a condescending look. "He's a gork." She told me, using medical slang for an unresponsive person, or vegetable. "And a gook on top of that. What's the big deal?"

I turned away from her in disgust. As hardened as I've become doing this job, it never fails to amaze me how crass, incompetent, and tactless con home nurses can be. It was one of those situations where you had to figure that if they were any good at what they did, they wouldn't be working THERE.